Welcome to the Autobahn Access Users Group

Updated: Jan. 16/2012

Well, if you've been wondering why you now get a broken link to web sites that
had been hosted on the Autobahn Access member's server this site will fill you
in on why.

Autobahn Access E-mail addresses

As of sometime today (Jan. 16/2012) the MX records for autobahn.mb.ca have been
repointed at prairie.ca following through
on what Les over at les.net had said in an E-mail
to me earlier today.

The "black hole" period between when the old server was turned off and when the
MX records had been repointed was only about a day. Test E-mails sent to my
Autobahn address from both Hotmail and Easymail are currently arriving promptly
at prairie.ca For the record test E-mails
sent from Easymail during the "black hole" period did arrive today after the
MX records were updated while the test sent from Hotmail during that period
bounced. Apparently Easymail doesn't give up attempting as fast as Hotmail
does.

It still would have been nice if the old server had stayed on at least until
the MX records were changed avoiding the "blackhole period". -_-

So for those of us that signed up at
prairie.ca this half of out legacy services
are now functioning.

If you are an Autobahn user that has not yet signed up at
prairie.ca, they do offer the option of an
E-mail box only service for those that don't need their dial up. ($60./Yr. plus
taxes) They said they don't offer forwarding because they've had support issues
with it in the past with it being harder to troubleshoot. A stand alone E-mail
box is available though.

There remains a concern I have about the E-mail service in the longer term
though. In a contact with My Net Mojo
they wrote:

>I have been informed that prairie.ca has offered to host email address for
>convince sake for autobahn users who are still using that email account...
>we will point mx records to their email servers for now. We cannot guarantee
>how long that this service will continue for, thus users should find a
>permanent solution for their email needs.

I am unclear on why they can't guarantee this for as long as they own the domain
name. In my response I begged them to keep the MX record pointed for as long as
they own the domain name.
With other ISPs that prairie.ca had bought
out in their entirity and got the domain name (sorry I don't remember the names
of those legacy ISPs off the top of my head) they are still keeping the old
E-mail addresses of any customers they assumed in those take overs active to
this day. So the ball is entirely in
My Net Mojo's court on this one as they own
the domain name and as indicated below plan to keep it.

Hopefully everyone was able to get their E-mail off the old server in time.

Idealy the best long term solution is to have your own domain name to eliminate
further provider dependancy for your E-mail/web presence, you can then change
where that E-mail is forwarded to and where those web URLs point on the fly.
Of course this doesn't really do anything about already established web links
or E-mails people have for you where their may not be a mechanism to get the
new information out everywhere that has old information. (Web sites that link
to you and haven't been maintained in years./People that might have an E-mail
on a piece of paper they dig up years from now.) I knew not to establish any
more of these dependancies when I signed up for Shaw in 1999 but did not know
this when I signed up at Autobahn in 1997. Also in 1997 getting your own domain
name was more expensive because Network Solutions had a monopoly on .com and the
.ca rules were much more convoluted in those days prior to CIRA.
(moonie.winnipeg.mb.ca would have been a bit clunky, though I suppose it's
better than ima.dildo.nf.ca, yes there really is a town by that name in
Newfoundland, no I don't think anyone ever had that domain name, it's just
an example of what someone named Ima in an inconvienient location could
have ended up with. ^_-)

Since we were lured into being dependant on these provider domain dependant
services in the early years by them being included in the dial up packages
we were buying anyways, their continued operation now remains important even
if the dial up access they were packaged with is easily replacable. ISP
domain names that date back to that era are in terms of their impact as
important as area codes or NNXs are to the Public Switched Telephone System.

The future of the autobahn.mb.ca domain name

I had gotten a reply from the original owners of Autobahn Access and it is:

les.net has operated the dial up pool, E-mail
server, and handled customer service for about the last 2 years of Autobahn
Access's operation.

However the domain name, DNS servers and operation of the members.autobahn.mb.ca
web server remained with the original owners who still operate
My Net Mojo a web hosting service.
This has complicated matters.

les.net had sent out the message informing members
that the Autobahn Access dial up and E-mail would shut down effective
Jan. 9/2012.

I do not at this time know the inside details of the arrangement between
les.net and Autobahn Access Corporation (who
continues to operate My Net Mojo).

As of Jan. 16/2012 Les has confirmed that he made the decision to shut down
dialup/E-mail, though he did not elaborate on his reasons why. To his credit
he did make arrangements with My Net Mojo
and prairie.ca to at least establish
our current E-mail arrangement and has said today (Jan. 16/2012):

I'll poke him about the URL forward stuff.

Which is about all he can do in that regard as Arif at
My Net Mojo holds all the cards on anything
dependent on the domain name and DNS.

Autobahn Access web URLs

Well the members.autobahn.mb.ca web server was already down before the
Dec. 7/2011 E-mail about the shut down. I do not know how far before it shut
down as I did not check frequently, I had always just assumed it would be up
because my membership was paid up and the server should be online. The few
times in the past when I had looked and it was offline it was usually back up
by the next day.

The main web page of Autobahn Access
is still online and has not yet had any changes to indicate that they have
shut down dial up service. Not sure what's up with that?

As for a positive solution to fixing the broken links all over the web I got
a sorta answer from Arif at
My Net Mojo:

We may look into redirecting http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~username to
different URLs, however there would be monthly/annual costs associated with
that service.

I have responded that I would be happy to buy that service for my web folder
but I am currently waiting to find out when/if they actually do this and at
what price. The use of the word may is not particularily
reassuring. -_-

To address their responses to some of the other suggestions I had:

In regards to old web hosting under the autobahn.mb.ca domain, we will not be
bringing up the server

So I'm a little unclear why they can't re-point the hostname at one of their
other existing servers that handles multiple host/domain names for their
various other hosting customers, configure it, and sell us web space in the
appropriate
folders. They seem happy to sell people hosting under new domain names, why
not customers that they already have lock in on because they
own the hostname that's in our old URLs? It can't be
that hard to configure! -_-

nor can we allow those services to be hosted with other entities for legal reasons

I'm unclear what "legal reasons" would prevent them from renting out a singular
host name under their domain since there are non-profit groups that offer
hostnames under their domain name free such as
these guys
or companies who built their business
specifically upon renting out hostnames such as
Dyn DNS (who started out as a
non-profit hobby group doing just that and latter made themselves into a
business). It's clearly not illegal to rent out singular hostnames.

Hopefully they go ahead and offer redirecting
http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~username to different URLs as a service as soon
as possible. (They should have had this ready to roll as soon as the original
members server was taken offline though. -_-) It's the right thing to
do and the profitable thing to do. I find it hard
to fathom why someone wouldn't act when those 2 factors are in sync! ?_?

About me

My name is Glen A. Pearce, an Autobahn Access customer
from Nov. 28/1997 (I still have the reciept ^_-) until it's final closure.

I was motivated to established this page because of
my own web site on Autobahn
(as well as wanting to still get E-mail from people that might only have my
original one from 1997 ^_-)

Finding the new location of pages that moved!

If you've managed to get this far trying to hunt down a broken link that started
with:

http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~glenap/

You can find the correct re-director (or in a few cases legacy graphics that
weren't included in the new site) by substituting that part of the URL with:

Below is a table of sites belonging to former Autobahn Access members with the
old URL and the new URL to make them easier to find for anyone that makes it to
this page. Please excuse the obvious bias of putting my own pages first. ^_-
All pages other than my own were found by poking around
Google for sites that links to still existed
somewhere and I used the Internet Archive
to see the old site and verify it was the same site. I seem to be the only
one in this group that had a re-director up in my Autobahn space long enough
for the Internet Archive to crawl and record it.

If you know of any other former Autobahn member web sites that should be added
or even know where some of the ones I was not able to locate moved to drop me
a note.

If you are a former Autobahn Access member

Drop me a note so I can add you to a mailing list (at a non-autobahn E-mail
address since the future of those seems tenuous at the moment) should I find
out anything else. Any messages sent out will be Bcc to keep your E-mail
addresses private and I'll keep messages to what's nesseccary. I won't flood
you or sell/give your E-mail to anyone without your permission.

If you had a web site previously in Autobahn Acess member space that moved to
a new URL be sure to also let me know so I can add it to the links chart above.

Link here!

If you have a web site/blog/message board/etc please put a link to this page
at http://www.moonie.ca/autobahn/
to maximize the chances of people finding it in search engines or otherwise.
I'd like to show up as high as possible in the rankings for terms like
"Autobahn Access", "Autobahn Access broken links", "member.autobahn.mb.ca"
as possible to maximize the chances of people looking for broken links finding
their way here to find any links I put up to old Autobahn Access members web
sites.

Examples of companies that do it right running infrastucture

Some companies out there do look out for their customers.
Below are 2 examples, both in the DNS bussiness.

First is
Easy DNS whom I have been using for the
registration and DNS on my domain names since Nov. 10/2000. A good example is
the transition to their
new user interface back on May 10/2010, they made a policy of no "flash cuts"
so that users were able to change over when it suited them and
not forcing anyone to change over any sooner. They still support the old
interface to this day! Annother example is their
no front running policy on their free
Easy WHOIS service. You can be assured
that if you look up a name on there for availability that they will not scoop
it up ahead of you in the hopes of being able to scalp it. This has been a
problem with other free WHOIS providers on the net. I recommend looking around
their blog
as they have a lot of usefull information for anyone who has or
is considering getting their own domain name.

Annother example of good practices is
Dyn DNS who had started out as a
non-profit/donation funded undertaking giving people free hostnames under their
various domains to point at their IP address or forward to a web URL.
They have since converted to a for profit business. However everybody who had
a hostname from before the conversion has it grandfathered to this day with no
set expiry date! This definately shows they care about what they are doing and
would be a good company to do bussiness with!

I could recommend either of these organizations if you are thinking of getting
your own domain name. Getting your own domain name can help you avoid a repeat
of the Autobahn debacle. Had I know in 1997 what I know now I may have still
signed up with Autobahn (some companies disappeared or got swallowed up by other
companies like MTS even sooner than Autobahn shut down, Pangea and Escape.ca come
to mind) but I sure as heck would
have gotten my own domain name set up in the first month of being on the internet
and used it for everything off the bat
so nobody would have had a bunch of web URLs or an E-mail address where I am now
dependant on somebody else co-operating to have them function.

What I know so far

At 6pm on Dec. 7/2011 les.net
sent out an E-mail to all of their Autobahn Access dial up customers that
the dial up and E-mail would be discontinued effective Jan. 9/2012.

In that message les.net recommended
prairie.ca as a
replacement/alternate dial up ISP.

Despite what I previously thought les.net did not absorb all of the assets
of Autobahn Access. They simply took over the operation of the dial up pool
and the interactions with dial-up customers. I mistakenly assumed this
because the customer service phone number for Autobahn Access was "rolled
over" to les.net and all Autobahn Access servers
had been renumbered into les.net IP blocks. (The old Autobahn Access IP
block of 66.187.64.0/20 had been released and since reassigned to
The Optimal Link Corp. in Houston, TX)

Ownership of the autobahn.mb.ca domain name stayed with the original owners
of Autobahn Access who hosted their own DNS servers within the les.net
IP space. (Confirmed they ran their own DNS servers on Jan.17/2012.)

The original owners still operate
My Net Mojo and had until whatever
unnotified shut off date operated the members.autobahn.mb.ca web server
where Autobahn client web pages were hosted

les.net stated they may point the MX record to prairie.ca
after the Autobahn Access server is shut down.

As of Jan. 3/2012 prairie.ca has confirmed that they are getting the mail
exchangers pointed at them as of Jan. 9th.

les.net will refund any differences in yearly fees in Jan/2012 for those
of us who paid further out than that.

The fate of the members.autobahn.mb.ca hostname is still in limbo as of
Jan. 3/2012

On Jan. 16/2012 Les confirmed that he had taken over running the E-mail
server for the same period of time he was running the dial up and handling
the customer service.

Contact

If you contact me by E-mail I'd recommend you start your subject line
with [AUTOBAHN] to let me know it relates to this
page. It helps when I'm trying to sift through the E-mail.

Although I've confirmed that I'll be able to retain the old
autobahn.mb.ca E-mail address for however long the original
owners of the domain name co-operate with prarie.ca I still
perfer that everyone who is aware of it use the moonie.ca
address on my contact page as I OWN moonie.ca
so I can keep control of it for life. (Either my lifetime or
CIRA's, whichever is first. ^_-)